Alex Webb, Columnist

Trade WhatsApp for Signal? Facebook Isn’t Fazed

The backlash over the messaging app’s data practices likely won’t hurt the social media giant. After all, these things happen every so often.

January 15, 2021 at 8:00 AM UTC

By Alex Webb

Alex Webb is a correspondent for Bloomberg Quicktake. He previously covered the technology, telecoms and media industries in London, San Francisco and Munich.

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Photographer: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP

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There’s been a furor around WhatsApp this week. New terms of service that seemed to suggest the encrypted messaging app would start sharing a lot more data with Facebook Inc., its parent company, sent users into a frenzy. Elon Musk even advocated use of a rival service, Signal, to his 42 million Twitter followers.

How much will this matter to Facebook? Very little. People are spending just as much time on WhatsApp this week as they were before the new user agreements were announced, according to app analytics firm Apptopia.